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Enough Enron? There's More

FOR those who follow the news only casually, highlights of the Enron trial, which started this week in Houston, may be enough.

As The Houston Chronicle's trial blog observed on Wednesday, the first day of testimony, the ranks of reporters covering the trial "are starting to thin out a bit." Many news organizations, the blog said, are covering the opening week and plan to return during interesting testimony, including that of Kenneth L. Lay, the former chairman; Jeffrey K. Skilling, the former chief executive; and Andrew S. Fastow, the former chief financial officer.

So even though the case against Mr. Lay and Mr. Skilling may hinge on an accounting method known as "mark to market," don't expect your favorite news anchor to spend a lot of time explaining it. But for those who can't get enough details of what may be the white-collar trial of the century, the Internet provides plenty (including a pretty good explanation of mark-to-market accounting at Wikipedia.com).

The Chronicle's blog (blogs.chron.com/enrontrialwatch) covers everything from the testimony to the antics of reporters complaining about their noisy colleagues and the lack of heat in the courtroom. Another Chronicle blog, this one by the cantankerous business columnist Loren Steffy, offers a less-detached, more colorful view of the trial (blogs.chron.com/fulldisclosure).

The details of the fall of Enron will, for many, be difficult to remember. For them, there is plenty of material for getting back up to speed. The Chronicle, which as the major hometown paper has followed the case from the beginning, provides a meaty package of background material. Other big papers feature something similar. Most include links to court documents, biographical material on leading players and multimedia reports and interviews.

The infamous Enron audiotapes -- of energy traders talking to one another about, for instance, what fun it is to deprive elderly California residents of electric power -- are collected at enrontapes.com, along with complete transcripts.

Finally, rtmark.com offers several Enron television commercials broadcast soon before the company's problems came to light. Each ends with the slogan "Enron: Ask Why" emblazoned across the screen as a synthesized voice repeats "Why? Why? Why?"

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ON SECOND THOUGHT -- Leander Kahney, writer of the Cult of Mac column for Wired News, thinks that, compared with Bill Gates, Steven P. Jobs is "a cipher," at least by Mr. Kahney's own arbitrarily chosen criteria. "People project their values onto him, and he skates away from the responsibilities that come with great wealth and power, " he wrote of Mr. Jobs.

Those responsibilities should include giving to charity, which Mr. Kahney says Mr. Jobs either has not done or has done only anonymously. Mr. Gates, meanwhile, "is giving away his fortune with the same gusto he spent acquiring it."

The least Mr. Jobs could do, by Mr. Kahney's reckoning, is speak out on social issues. But, "to the best of my knowledge, in the last decade or more, Jobs has not spoken up on any social or political issue he believes in."

Mr. Kahney concludes that Mr. Jobs is "nothing more than a greedy capitalist who's amassed an obscene fortune."

"It's shameful. In almost every way, Gates is much more deserving of Jobs' rock star exaltation."

UPPITY AND PROUD -- Most of you, take note. Mike Jeffries, the chief executive of Abercrombie & Fitch, doesn't want you in his clothing stores. "We want to market to cool, good-looking people," he told Salon.com. "We don't market to anyone other than that. Candidly, we go after the cool kids. We go after the attractive all-American kid with a great attitude and a lot of friends. A lot of people don't belong, and they can't belong. Are we exclusionary? Absolutely." In a photograph, the 61-year-old Mr. Jeffries is shown sporting dyed-blond hair, blue jeans with factory-applied paint splotches and a pair of flip-flops. DAN MITCHELL